Bricklayer gets ticket, finally

Press, 21 January 1983, Page 4

Bricklayer gets ticket, finally

PA Wellington Mr Dennis O'Callaghan, the Shannon bricklayer who held up with a gun the secretary of the Trades Certification Board five months ago. has finally got his ticket.

His examination results and certificate have arrived in the mail to end a five-year battle for the slip of paper to prove that he is a tradesman. That has not been all the good news for Mr O’Callaghan. Last Friday, his wife gave birth to a healthy girl and it looks as if he will be back in work next week, after being unemployed since leaving his last job, at the Porirua Police College, last November.

Mr O’Callaghan said yesterday that he received marks of 58 and 53 in the two examinations he sat in November, much as he expected. The result prompted no big celebration. “I just went up to the hospital to see my missus,” he said.

Mr O'Callaghan hit the headlines in September last year when he walked into the Trades Certification Board's offices, in Kent Terrace, pulled out an intimidating but useless slug gun and said, “Nobody fe leaving till I get an answer.” The Armed Offenders Squad was called.' streets

were cordoned, and he gave himself up two hours later to the police. He was later fined $245. That incident came five years after he sat his trade examination for the first time. After sitting the paper then, he was advised that he was not eligible to have sat the examination and the results have, never been made known to him.

Before holding up the board last year Mr O'Callaghan had spent several, frustrating years trying to get those results, writing to anybody who could have helped, including the Prime Minister. The results of that 1978 examination are now of academic interest only, but the board is still not prepared to make them available. .

The board’s secretary, Mr John Lyon, the man confronted by Mr O’Callaghan in September, said yesterday there was no official record of; the result although his paper had been marked, and was still on the board’s files.

“I am not prepared to give those marks as they have never officially been recorded.

“He has now got his results (from the latest examinations) and a certificate. I am very pleased for him and I hope he has got a nice place to hang it,” said Mr Lyon.